


Happy Endings

by QueenoftheFriendzone



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brief Kakashi face reveal, Crack-turned-somewhat-angst, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Gen, In a kind of good way, Inspired by Fanart, Kakashi is very good at manipulating people, Mentions of Naruto ep 101 and Shippuden ep 469, Mostly takes place during Ep 108 of Naruto, Sasuke stays, Team as Family, that kakashi-sasuke dynamic you always needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 11:05:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8977081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenoftheFriendzone/pseuds/QueenoftheFriendzone
Summary: “If you stay, I’ll let you see under my mask.”In another universe, Team 7 is not the broken team that needs repairs and replacements forced between cracks and the desperate attempt of eleven children to fix it. Team 7 is not the team that begins with hairline fractures and ends up shattering with cracks that spread like forked lightning. Team 7 is not the team which needs a hunt throughout the world to gather the fragments of a family that once was, or fitted back together with blood and tears that have congealed, and still end up uglier than it was before.In another universe, Sasuke stays, and Kakashi keeps his promise to Sakura, and Naruto keeps his friends.In another universe, everything is (mostly) okay.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written from the burning need to see this fanart (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/f4/41/91/f44191a5125694109b0b62c52076885e.jpg) in fic form, completed in about an hour because I'm sitting in front of my computer at 2am with a fucked up brain.
> 
> (I know the fanart is kinda cracky, but i also know crack is not my best genre. Therefore, angst.)

In another universe, Kakashi lectures Sasuke. He pins his student down between steel wires and tree trunks and gloomy thoughts and delivers a well-intentioned but unwanted lecture about the dangers of revenge. He talks the way he always talks, with a hand in his pocket and a matter-of-fact tone but his words reek of concern.

In another universe, Sasuke trembles with helpless rage and bares his teeth and snarls because he _knows_ he’s the only person who truly comprehends what it’s like to lose everything and more —

( _And why wouldn’t he? He knows he’s the only person to come home to a room full of blood and dead parents who were massacred by the one he trusted. To have a place that was once home but now filled with ghosts and the screams of the dead and musky age-old regrets._ )

— and threatens to make Kakashi understand.

( _Kakashi is supposed to imagine his father and mother torn to pieces, lying in too much blood that he’d never seen them bleed. He’s supposed to imagine a brother with eyes the colour of the death that bursts into his soul and tears his mind to shreds. He’s supposed to imagine a sister, cousins, friends, stabbed through the heart by the one they loved. And Sasuke is supposed to relish a the horrified look that dawns on the man’s face._ )

A shrug. A smile. “Oh, they’ve all been killed already.” A mask over a mask over another mask.

( _What, did you think I lived this long as a ninja without gaining scars?_ )

( _It is Kakashi that watches Sasuke’s jaw drop and eyes widen, and all he feels is pity._ )

In another universe, Kakashi pleads with Sasuke to make peace with the living instead of war with the dead. He reminds them both of the brilliant light and warm glow that have slowly but surely driven away most of the darkness in their lives, and prays that Sasuke understands.

( _Sage, he’s even worse with children now than when he was their age._ )

( _Kakashi remembers his own coping mechanisms. He had locked up his emotions and thrown away the key, then spoke to empty coffins and gravestones when that hadn’t worked, then killed and killed until his world was black and pouring red and still nothing had worked. What the hell was that old man thinking when he assigned Kakashi as jounin-sensei to this team?_ )

In another universe, Sasuke barely registers the loosening wires that pool around his waist, caught up in turbulent thoughts where revenge and love wage war, and his filial piety is tossed into a raging sea of emotion.

( _Is it okay to destroy the people of the new family to protect the memory of the old?_ )

In another universe, Kakashi doesn’t disappear the instant he finishes the lecture, no matter how much he wants Sasuke to make the decision by himself. He has a promise to keep, and if there’s anything he’s learnt as a sensei, it’s that he doesn’t go back on his word. After a while, he sits, cross-legged, on the branch and looks at Sasuke the way he remembers Minato looking at the silver-haired chuunin who locked himself away between wooden walls and broken hearts.

( _What would Minato-sensei have done?_ )

( _— “Why don’t you join us for dinner tonight, Kakashi? Kushina’s making miso soup with eggplant! You know, you don’t have to bother with the mask when you’re with us!” —_

_— “Hey, Kakashi, if you accompany me to pick out Obito’s birthday present, I’ll bring you on the next A-rank mission I get. Hmm? How does that sound?” —_

_— “Yo Obito! If you’re on time for four times in a row, I’ll teach you a new jutsu! Deal?” —_ )

“If you stay, I’ll let you see under this mask.”

In another universe, Kakashi instantly regrets his words, and then instantly un-regrets his words because the cunning look that Sasuke is wearing means so much trouble, but it also means that he’s _curious and interested_ and curious and interested means he’s _staying_.

( _Of course, Sasuke remembers everyone’s obsession with Kakashi-sensei’s mask. He remembers their pitiful attempts at tailing him, remembers Sukea and his photos that never actually captured anything, remembers the thrill of one-upping his sensei, remembers Naruto’s infectious enthusiasm and Shikamaru’s careful planning. Most of all, he remembers —_ )

“Only if it’s not another mask.”

( _Maybe it’s worth staying. Just for that_.)

( _But Itachi —_ )

( _But Kakashi-sensei —_ )

In another universe, four ninja from Otogakure watch from the rooftops as Hatake Kakashi talks to his student. They watch as he sits on the branch and keeps talking to his student — their target. They watch as Sasuke lifts his chin and glares and mutters a few words. They watch as Kakashi helps his student out of tangled wires and onto his back. They watch as he carries his student and leaps across the village. They watch and realise that they shouldn’t just be watching, but it’s too late to give chase.

In another universe, Sasuke returns to a team that loves and cares for him. Naruto teaches him perseverance, and watches him fight back, nursing bruises after each loss, gasping for breath after each nightmare. Sakura teaches him love, the muted sort of comfort that he'd never realised he'd missed from the time when his father used to pat him on the shoulder and his mother tucked him in bed. Kakashi teaches him to heal, and supports him when the cracks just seem to keep _spreading_ because if anyone knows how to recover from loss, it's Kakashi.

In another universe, Kakashi pulls down his mask in front of another person for the first time in twelve years. It is most unfortunate that Sasuke had activated his Sharingan just moments before the reveal and now has his sensei's face memorized in perfect detail. It's somewhat more fortunate, in Kakashi's opinion, that Sasuke is shit at art.

In another universe, Team 7 is intact and things are ( _mostly_ ) okay. 

( _There is still the Akatsuki, but that problem is for another time._ )

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and feedback are appreciated! ^^


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